Coping Mechanisms
by cupcaked
Summary: It's really important to consider that, although coping mechanisms can help people during a traumatic experience, they are often detrimental to relationships. Sasuke/Karin, Sakura/Sai.


**A/N:** Please pay attention to the rating - it's rated for (non-explicit) smut.

Coping Mechanisms

Definition: Any conscious or unconscious mechanism of adjusting to environmental stress without altering personal goals or purposes.

--

He is sleeping, lightly, when the door slides open quietly.

He is aware of this, but so is she.

Sasuke doesn't open his eyes, and Karin makes her way across the dark room and crouches next to him.

He is still, and she cautiously bends over him and kisses him. He doesn't stop her. She starts from his jaw line, and makes her way slowly until her lips are pressing softly against his eyelids.

"Karin," he says as she straddles him, and her name is a question and a command.

She stops, and he opens his eyes.

"Have you ever done something without analyzing every single detail involved?"

He is silent, and in the dark, she smirks. "Me neither."

And she runs her hand is his hair and bends down to kiss him on the lips, rough and hard.

He still doesn't stop her.

--

One week after she kisses him, Sai buys a book on love.

The signs, the reasons behind it, and the art of lovemaking.

Sakura comes over to his apartment to drop off some art supplies two weeks after the kiss, and he greets her with a bottle of sake.

"Hello, Sakura," he says as he pours her a cup.

"Sai?" she says, but she accepts the cup anyway.

He kisses her after they empty their respective cups, and her tongue is bitter in his mouth but if he could smile, he would.

--

His hands touch her shoulders, and he is surprised to feel nothing but an expanse of smooth skin.

Karin is not wearing her glasses. Or anything else, for that matter.

She is pulling off his pants, and as his hands explore her body, he realises her shoulders and chest are the only parts of her body not riddled with jagged bite marks.

"Does it hurt?"

She looks him in the eye as she slides into him, her gaze intense. He exhales sharply, and she doesn't even bat an eyelid.

"Nothing really hurts anymore."

When she kisses him again, on the lips, he thinks he can almost taste the despair on her tongue.

Karin tells herself this is nothing but lust.

Sasuke tells himself this is nothing.

--

The second time she kisses Sai, she still sees Sasuke.

When she closes her eyes, however, all she can feel is Sai. Sai's breath and Sai's tongue and Sai's gentle, gentle hands.

It is confusing, but brilliant.

She places her palms on Sai's chest, and pushes lightly. "This isn't fair to you."

He looks at her; really, really looks at her before speaking. "I read somewhere that life isn't fair. Shouldn't love be the same?"

His eyes are dark, like Sasuke's, but they are soft and it makes that empty space in her heart grow a little wider.

She takes his hand, and leads him towards the bed.

--

His eyes are like the waves breaking on shore: dark and limitless one moment, bright and clear for an instant as he comes.

She keeps her gaze locked on his eyes, and just as they burn their brightest, his eyes snap shut as his body rocks beneath hers. In that moment, she sees Uchiha Sasuke as _just_ Sasuke, not as the leader of their team, not as the last known survivor of his clan, not as the man so bent on revenge.

Karin blinks the sweat from her eyes, and Sasuke's nails dig perfect half-moons into her waist.

--

Sakura takes the reigns.

She kisses him, she touches him, she guides him into her.

Sai is a fast learner.

He makes her sweat, he makes her eyes widen, he makes her body tremble.

What he cannot do is make her make a sound. When she is not kissing him, her pink lips are pressed tightly together. He cannot make her lose control.

Sai thinks this is making love.

Sakura knows this is fucking.

--

When her body buckles above his, he bites her right shoulder to keep himself from making a sound.

He tastes salt first, from their skin, then iron, from her blood. Finally, he tastes the light, familiar sweetness of her chakra, and he pulls back as she screams his name.

The taste lingers in his mouth, and he thinks that maybe this is how Spring tastes like.

She looks down at him, her eyes wide, and he sees the mark from his teeth, red and angry, on her shoulder.

_That hurt_, her eyes say, and when he touches a finger to the mark, she flinches.

--

Sai's breath is hot on her skin, and she cannot help but think of branding and ownership.

She presses a kiss, hard enough to bruise, on his lips and thinks _you can have everything but my heart_.

As she thinks this, it occurs to her this is the most she has ever hated Sasuke.

Sai kisses her back, and his eyes say _I love you._

Sakura wonders which is more heartbreaking: the fact that she cannot love Sai or the fact he already loves her.

--

Sasuke falls asleep with his back to her.

Now that her lust has been sated, Karin is starting to fear that lingering feeling left behind in her heart.

She can yearn for Sasuke, she can kiss him and fuck him and whisper his name but she definitely cannot love him.

Karin walks out of the room just as silently as she had arrived.

He is aware of his, but so is she.

--

Sai sits on the edge of his bed, the blanket pooled around his waist.

Sakura is in the adjoining bathroom, drying her hair.

"Is this love?" he asks suddenly, with such innocence she has to conceal her flinch.

She looks at herself in the mirror, her eyes etched with pain before turning back to see the blood on the sheets and the endless questions in his eyes.

"I really don't know, Sai."

**END**


End file.
